Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Chapter 38

Haymitch

It's a tricky little thing, sobriety is. Awakening your senses to a state so heightened that you couldn't even turn it off if you wanted to, sobriety forces you to pay attention to the things that the alcohol blurs for you.

Like, for example, the sight of a body caught in between states of life and death, or the smell of formaldehyde and filth catapulting up your nostrils, or the feeling of someone's blood on your hands.

I don't breathe until she starts to. After what feels like hours of watching doctors try to pump some life back into her, I don't let myself live again until Effie Trinket sputters to life with coughs and spasms.

Her eyes are wild, bloodshot, and dismayed. She's as limp as a rag doll. If it weren't for the nametag sewn onto her dusty Capitol clothes, I would have never guessed it was even her lying there.

They tell me that her body went into septic shock a while ago. The drastic change of scene beat her immune system to a pulp, and due to all of the bacteria from the treatment in the Capitol that got into her bloodstream, it's a miracle that she's still alive.

All I hear is that she's still alive.

The doctors hook her up to a bunch of fancy machines until she's beeping from just about everywhere, and they finally shed her of her tattered dress. I wince when I realize that what has just been tossed in the trash is exactly what she had been wearing in the final hour before I left her to rot in the Capitol.

They tell me I can take as much time as I need to be alone with my friend. I don't argue when they call her that.

In the white District Thirteen hospital gown that clashes with her pale, translucent skin and limp blonde knots of hair loosely splayed across her mound of pillows, she looks even more like a ghost than she did before.

The evidence of her torture is etched in her body. Everything, from the whip lashes that crisscross her forearms, to the sores on her back that cause her to writhe and claw behind her subconsciously, to the purple and yellow discoloration around where her nose has been broken, screams at me, tells me that I am responsible for creating the ghost of Effie Trinket.

She's going to make it. The doctors told you that she was going to make it, I tell myself, as if it makes any of this sight more bearable.

And I don't know what else to do, or say, or think without being completely disgusted with myself…so I simply take a seat beside her. I clasp my palms together to keep them from shaking in my lap.

When she opens her eyes, looking even farther away than the Capitol itself, the weight of my guilt comes crashing down upon me.

Immediately upon spying me at her bedside, she opens her dry, cracked lips to speak. No sound comes out.

"Hey," I tell her dumbly. Correcting my greeting etiquette, I edit myself to say instead, "I mean, um…Hello, Princess."

The nickname is old and worn, and in a melancholy sort of way, it brings me back to a happier time in which I would tease her with the name 'Princess' on the train while en route to the Hunger Games.

The name seems to have no effect on her. She doesn't look very much like a Princess right now, anyway. She looks more like a prisoner. And I feel like the grand freakin' court jester for making such a shitty joke.

Trinket blinks listlessly. She gazes around at her cramped emergency room, eyes growing wider with confusion in each second that passes. Once more she tries to speak, and I watch as she consciously decides against it. She flinches, shrinks back against the bed, and twists her mouth into a foul grimace, as if saying anything will trigger some sort of alarm or reopen her wounds.

She has been tortured into becoming an Avox of sorts, muted by her own terror.

I sigh and scrub a hand over my scraggly beard. I suppose my words are going to have to speak where her words have failed her.

I've never wanted a drink more than I do in this moment.

"You're in District Thirteen, Prin—Effie," I start quickly. Her eyes bulge from their hollow sockets and I jump on a further explanation for her sanity's sake.

"I know …it's a lot to take in. After the Dark Days, District Thirteen began rebuilding itself underground with intentions of becoming strong enough of a military power to overthrow the Capitol. This is the home of the rebellion."

She doesn't look so shocked this time. Probably because what I'm spewing at her is all information that they must have tried to beat out of her in the Capitol. It's information I could have given her, and information I ultimately chose to withhold from her.

How long ago was it when I first had that fateful first meeting with Plutarch Heavensbee in his secret study? When did my correspondence with District Thirteen first begin? How many days, weeks, months has it been since those table-turning afternoons when I tapped Finnick Odair or Beetee Latier on the shoulder and whispered codes in their ears?

The details are fuzzy, blurred with the help of having been wasted out of my mind at the time. But the holes in the stories, the opportunities in which I could have let Effie Trinket in on my scheming, are clear as day.

Her stare is like ice, but it makes my cheeks burn. She's waiting for me to say something else, I can sense it. Of course, her expression is lacking in the usual puckered lips and arched eyebrows that drove me up walls before, but I know an expectant Trinket when I see it.

The elephant in the room is practically squatting on my face and shitting right in my sober eyes.

I've done my best at explaining, but now it's time for me to give her what has been long overdue.

"I should have told you about District Thirteen, or the rebellion, or my involvement in any of it. I thought, given your status, that they would leave you alone and assume that you knew nothing…it was stupid of me, and I realize that. There hasn't been a day that has gone by since my escape that I haven't thought about it, about you, there…in the…I, um…I'm just glad you're…okay. I know I can't take back any of what's happened over these past few months, but I hope you are able to forgive me someday."

If she takes any of that pitiful spiel in, I can't register it. I opt to pat her awkwardly on the forearm, right where a tender bruise has begun to dissolve. It must still hurt, because she flinches at my touch.

Plutarch couldn't choose a finer moment to burst into the room. He's already speaking before he can get the door closed.

I make no mistake of the glint of recognition in Effie's eye.

"They've finally managed to sedate Peeta. Katniss is a mess, naturally. Keeps muttering something about being all alone, even though her mother and sister are with her. They're trying their best…"

My fists clench at the mentioning of the Star-Crossed Lovers, or at whatever is left of them, at least. It doesn't seem to phase Heavensbee that we are entirely responsible for all of the destruction that has panned out in the last hour. Without stopping to take so much as a breath, he continues blabbering proudly on about how he's already got the top neurologists in Thirteen scouring Peeta's brain for 'abnormalities' that one good look at him could easily detect.

He finally notices that Effie's wide awake and smiles like a goon as he takes in the shrunken remains of my District escort.

"Ah, Miss Trinket!" Plutarch claps his hands together. Effie winces at the sudden, sharp noise. "It is my pleasure to confirm that you are in District Thirteen! Glad to see you up and alert. I'm sure Haymitch here has kept you up to speed on everything."

Trinket doesn't respond. Her barren eyes quickly ghost over me before she politely stares back at Plutarch. Even in this state, she manages to stay prim and proper. It would make me laugh if it didn't make me feel so sick to my stomach.

If I did not know exactly how this man works, after having been so closely connected to him for years, I would be enraged with his behavior. But none of this is out of character. Plutarch, oblivious to all, runs strictly on the schedule printed on his arm and the communicuff strapped to his mighty wrist. He doesn't stop to take the time to pause and reflect on what any of our actions have done to these people. He's programmed to stay running, even when the rest of us have run out of batteries.

The items on the list have been checked off. Rescue mission? Check. Now it's time to move onto the next propo, the next tactic, the next battle, in order to keep the rebellion's momentum going.

Plutarch Heavensbee's life would be much less 'brilliant' if he ever stopped to take a look back at the collateral damage of this rebellion's checklist.

So it doesn't come as a surprise from me when he nearly rams his hand into Effie Trinket's face, as forward as he'll ever be.

"Welcome to the rebellion, Effie Trinket."

What does come as a shock to me, however, is when the person at the other end of the handshake shoves Heavensbee's hand away from her face with a newfound force and spits in his direction with a stolid, "No."

Her voice startles me. It is harsh-sounding, as if some darker being has inhabited her, and it is full of anger so intense that pulls the once chipper, grating tone of her voice into the depths of a deep grave.

Plutarch pulls back, stunned.

"P-pardon me?" he stutters.

Effie's eyes glower at the stout man, who is now growing red in the face.

"I said, no. I want no part in...this."

Plutarch is reeling. He tries everything to break her stony expression and endless stream of refusals. Begging, bargaining…he even goes as far as to play the Capitol card on her.

"Really, Effie? You're going to side with the Capitol? The place where they imprisoned you, beat you, nearly killed you? You owe your life to the rebels…"

The laugh that falls from her lips is low, acerbic, and filled to the brim with chilling resentment.

Whatever the hell it is exactly that happened to her behind closed Capitol doors hasn't transformed her into a ghost, but rather a phantom of who she used to be. My thoughts unwillingly return to Peeta's hands clasped around Katniss' throat and I have no trouble imagining Effie doing the same to Plutarch. Or me.

"What life? I may as well be dead. I know I wish that were the case," Effie fires back.

This statement is perhaps the most horrifying thing she has said since her voice returned to her. It is all too-telling, opening the widow into her darkened mind so wide that I can almost see everything inside of her.

I'd recognize the interior decorating anywhere. She looks exactly like I do on the inside now.

It terrifies me.

"And I never said I was siding with the Cap—with them. I appreciate the offer, Plutarch, but I am afraid that I am no longer siding with any party," Effie informs him as she folds her cracked hands over her abdomen, the traces of her formal tendencies resurfacing out of habit. "I have made myself very clear on that point."

Plutarch sighs audibly.

"Haymitch, please talk some sense into your escort!" he nearly shrieks at me, shaking me back to life and forcing me to remember that I am in the room with them.

Effie's eyes are suddenly on me once more. They are considerably softer than they had been while she had been arguing with Plutarch and even before I had delivered my pathetic apology.

But there's something else flickering away in those depressed blue irises. A look that would only take fifteen years of understanding the language of her every move to be able to recognize.

This is a silent plea. It's a much more subdued version of the exaggerated, almost patronizing looks I would get before downing bottles of white liquor on Reaping Day or when I was in a particularly grumpy mood around someone important.

"It's for your own good," she would tell me. She forced me to watch her pour bottle after bottle of alcohol into the train's sewage system after I made a fool of myself at the reaping and the children had retired to their rooms nearly every year, once she built up enough courage to stand up to her not-so-intimidating drunk of a Mentor.

What she didn't know, at the time, was that I used that alcohol to keep my demons away.

How could she have known, I level, until she encountered demons of her own?

And what I didn't know at the time was that, in her own annoyingly lavish way, Effie Trinket would pour those bottles of liquor down the sink in order to help me mentor those kids as best I could in an effort to get me to stop blaming myself entirely when they died.

How could I have known, I repeat to myself with an ironic smirk, until I secured her name on the rescue mission in order to help her?

Effie Trinket doesn't know what the hell she wants. The woman has just narrowly escaped death, and in the blink of an eye, she has been thrown into the rings of the rebellion without a choice. It's a choice I got, a choice Odair, Mason, Beetee, the rest of the rebels, and even Plutarch himself got…and it wasn't as easy of a choice as putting on pants in the morning, that's for sure. It took weeks for me to grapple with the idea of revolution before I became involved with it.

I think of Katniss, the one person who we didn't grant a choice to. For her involuntary service, it took even longer for her to come around to the idea of what her title of Mockingjay actually meant, and even still, the girl is a catatonic mess over the boy who was never going to get a choice to begin with.

Turning my attention back to Trinket, in all of her ghastly glory, I try to make some sense out of all of these realizations. I see the cogs and wheels slowly turning in Effie's head and know that she is thinking as well. Under all of that deflated hair, it must be a full-fledged battle in there.

I try to put the shoe on the other foot, walking a mental mile in those obscene high-heeled contraptions for just a moment, to understand the weight of what we are asking her to do: agree immediately to abandon her entire upbringing, and to abandon herself, for a cause she knows nothing about.

She may not know any better, sure. She may not know that the cause we are fighting for is ultimately a far more just one than Snow's. She may not know that where she is now is far safer than where she has just escaped from. She may not know that the success of the rebellion will be the best option for a target like her.

I could try telling her all of that, but it would be no use.

Because when I was sixteen years old, I was her. Hell, I still am her. Lost, confused, and broken beyond repair. What seemed like an erroneous association to be seen together before now fits like a perfectly-tailored glove between us.

Freshly destroyed, she doesn't know what to believe about anything anymore. That much is clear. Her trust in the Capitol, the place she called home, has literally been beaten out of her. So how can she blindly trust this new, foreign environment that had she had been drilled to understand no longer existed?

It's a situation I can relate to, having been there one too many times before.

Plutarch clears his throat in agitation. The sound crawls up my spine and rattles my sober brain.

The former Gamemaker has no time to understand Effie's unspoken plea. His meaty fingers hover over his communicuff. It's only a matter of the push of a button before Coin is notified of Trinket's seemingly seditious remarks against Thirteen. Only a matter of moments until Coin has her facing the consequences for those actions.

I stare back at Effie Trinket's large, pleading, tired eyes and come to the final, most startling realization of them all. The little trust left inside of her has been placed in me.

I kept her out of the loop, I got her arrested, and her blood is on my hands, comingling with each Tribute's just a little more with each passing second in which her haunting blue eyes stay transfixed on me.

By all means, I shouldn't have her last sliver of hope. I don't deserve it.

But, like that damn ill-informed nurse said, we're 'friends'.

"I'm helping you, Haymitch," she would insist as the last precious drops of liquor slunk down into the pipes of the train.

"How on earth is this supposed to help me, Princess?" I would sneer, almost whining, as I hungrily watched the drops go.

"That's what friends do. They help each other," came her annual reply, her voice clipping and lips upturning in such an animated manner that I always read as joking.

I think of the last night we saw each other, the night when I held her in my arms and let her cry. I told her I did not hate her. She told me she didn't hate me either.

The look in her eyes that night, and the look in her eyes now, tells me that she was never joking about being my friend.

I rise from my chair and push Plutarch out of the room. He asks me what the hell I propose to do about this 'traitor'.

With a trembling hand, I pour her drink down the drain.

They keep Effie Trinket in the psych ward of the hospital. The walls are padded. The room is under high surveillance. The medication is heavy and improper in terms of dosage.

The sight of her blankly staring at a wall, chained to a metal bed and in the process of being heavily sedated, was enough to send me into a raging spiral that resulted in my prohibition from any more visits. Her screams of terror at the commotion did nothing to help with my nightmares.

She's not psychotic. Confused about where her allegiance lies and scared shitless about her fate, sure, but definitely not as insane as they are playing her up to be down here. Apparently having a mind of your own earns you a spot and a label in the loony bin of Thirteen, and the treatment of Effie Trinket has me seriously questioning how I haven't ended up in a straight-jacket yet.

But this alternative was my only way of reasoning with Plutarch. Convince him that she is crazy. She was too traumatized by the Capitol. She was saying things she did not mean. Give her some time to come around to the idea of the rebellion and let her decide on her own, I told him.

It was either that or a one-way ticket to prison. If I had known that I was essentially signing her off to the same fate, perhaps I would have thought of a better lie.

Five weeks after her incarceration, the well-being of Patient 0515 is still 'highly confidential' to me. I'm not allowed to know much of anything about her progress or whereabouts. The second my face is spotted within a fifteen foot radius of her guarded door, I am escorted away due to my disorderly behavior at my first and only visit to her room.

Plutarch slips me the occasional bit of information, however. He is suddenly optimistic that Miss Trinket will be making a 'complete turnaround' from the day she arrived in the hospital. She's back to voluntarily eating solid foods as of two weeks ago. She asked for a sewing machine and cloth to make headbands for her nurses last week. She even managed to crack a joke about someone doing something about the 'dreadfully drab' color of her walls yesterday (although knowing the Princess' distaste for the unoriginality of the color white, I can't say I agree with Plutarch that it was a joke).

Nonetheless, the tidbits of information allow me fleeting moments of happiness in knowing that I did not screw her up beyond fixing. It pleases me even more to know that Effie Trinket is picking up the pieces of herself on her own and, in typical Trinket fashion, is making the best out of her predicament. Perhaps she's stronger than I ever gave her credit for.

Meanwhile, down the hall, her neighbor Peeta makes progress of his own. The strides are much shorter, and often feel as though they are erased by two steps backward, but they are there nonetheless.

Madge Undersee has got him chuckling over some ridiculous story about his older brother Graham's secret love for frosting petals and her fourteenth birthday cake. Primrose Everdeen mutters into her tape recorder something about the mentioning of the brother not setting Peeta off on tangents about Katniss and firebombs. Aurelius scribbles. Plutarch blissfully swivels his chair in my direction, jabs a thumb toward where Peeta sits and interacts with Madge cordially, and winks.

As skeptical as I had been about the idea of reverse hijacking before, the Mayor's brat has proven herself to be the best medicine for the boy. Like Peeta, Undersee has a distinct way with words, filling his thoughts with pleasant stories of their childhood and bringing out more of his old self than any syringes full of questionable serums ever could.

There are even times where I find myself transfixed by the thought of the boy having a life, before the Games took his innocence away. Imagining tiny versions of the man who endured the arena twice doing menial things, like icing cookies or racing Madge Undersee to school, relaxes me.

It's the blonde leading the blonde in a quest for normalcy in the tracker jacker's nest of his mind.

He's had his off days, certainly. The 'not real' outweighs the 'real', and some visits with the Undersee girl have resulted in icepacks and morphling for both of them. Some visits he'll just outright refuse to speak to her, but those are days in which he chooses not to speak to anyone. Sometimes Katniss is his mortal enemy. The stories he tells about his shiny memories are so elaborate and so wrong that it's almost painful to hear how much his memory has been altered against her. But the soft-spoken blonde girl is slowly convincing him otherwise about all of it. She's a smart one, the Undersee girl. Has him sorting out and categorizing and making lists, like he's some sort of secretary to his own thoughts.

She even manages to weave some positive words for Katniss into her stories and strategies, and yesterday had him writing up a list of words to describe Katniss. It was a bold move, and it received a lot of backlash from the boy strapped to the chair, but he agreed to it when Undersee eventually got him to calm down and reasoned that it would help him 'figure her out'.

The list currently reads 'Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancee. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute.' He sleeps with it clasped in his fist sometimes, ironically on his worst days with Madge.

I try to ignore the terms he's scrawled down while his eyes were clouded over with venom and reread the ones printed in his lilting cursive whenever I need a confidence boost in his recovery.

And he is. Recovering, that is. As difficult as it has been to watch him struggle with his own mind, Peeta's bouncing back quicker than any of us expected him to. The mentioning of his list's subject barely sets him off as of late. In fact, Katniss is now more of an enigma than an enemy after just two weeks of intensive reverse hijacking.

We owe it all to the younger Everdeen sister, although the thirteen-year-old girl is quick to deflect any sort of compliment. She's just focused on getting him better.

Aurelius and Heavensbee see her hard work and extra efforts as diligence toward getting her medical license, but I know why Prim Everdeen keeps herself up at all hours with the damn tape recorder practically fused to her hand.

It's for her, the sister who should be where Plutarch and I sit, or even where Madge Undersee sits.

If only the enigma herself could be here to see it all happen. If only she would set aside aspersions and see him trying his hand at something constructive rather than seeing him hell-bent on destroying something—or rather, destroying her.

But she's been missing in action ever since her discharge from the hospital.

The door clicks open, and the Undersee girl is seen wiping tears from her eyes. I'm used to seeing her cry. It's all part of the daily routine.

Today's batch of tears stem from joy, however. Undersee is less secretive about her overflow of emotion and she smiles a watery grin at Prim, the only person behind this operation whom she seems to really trust with Peeta's well-being.

Can't say I blame her. I wasn't exactly the ideal Mentor to the boy. Undersee, a closer childhood friend of his than any of us knew, must see my being here as purely an attempt at clearing my conscious.

She's only half-right, but I'll let her think she understands me. She doesn't know how much I truly care about the boy with the bread who is a better man than I'll ever be. Doesn't have to know a damned thing about me and my relationship with Peeta, if we're being frank here.

"He did well today," Madge tells Prim. The young trainee taps her recorder knowingly and returns the smile.

"I liked that story. About your birthday cake, I mean. It was sweet."

Undersee looks off into some faraway portal that leads to the past and sighs as she relays the far more gruesome details of the story that she happened to omit for Peeta's delicate sake.

"Carmichael Saunders wasted no time knocking that cake to the ground as soon as he showed up at my house. Peeta's brother had worked so hard on it, on every single one of those pink roses, and I loved it so much when I picked it up at the bakery with my father…Peeta knew that. He spent my whole party at the bakery re-decorating the silly thing, and he even took a horrible beating from his mother for sneaking extra supplies to do it. He never thought I knew about that, but it was Carmichael who told me that Monday when he saw Mrs. Mellark beating him senseless on his way to school that morning. Peeta didn't come to class for almost a week."

The story sends Primrose in shambles. She starts weeping as soon as the older girl finishes speaking. Undersee looks terrified by the impact she has on her younger cohort and shifts uncomfortably.

Aurelius hastily thanks her for her services. Stony blue eyes, eyes just like her aunt's, are suddenly full of awareness.

"I didn't mean to—I'm sorry. I'm just trying to remind myself, and you all, I guess, why we're all really here. Even I forget sometimes how good he was…how good he still is. You see the way he gets every time he hurts me…he's still in there."

"We know that, Sweetheart," I reply tersely, her resemblance to Maysilee in this moment becoming too much to bear.

"We're all rooting for him," Plutarch adds.

"But does he know that?" Undersee asks, her voice shifting to sound exactly like Maysilee's did when we parted ways in the arena. "I'm the only one who has worked with him. As far as he knows, I'm the only one left who cares."

Aurelius clicks his tongue in agitation. "Alright, that's enough, Soldier Undersee."

The fiery niece of Maysilee Donner is yanked by a few nurses out of the room, but not before she morphs into Maysilee herself, just as she appeared before she died in my arms during the Quell.

Even after she has left the room, I cannot shake my own hijacked image of blood spouting from Madge Undersee's neck. Terror rolls off of me in cool waves, and everyone else in the room catches chill, remaining silent until my breath has evened.

"Madge is right, you know. She can't be the only person he learns to trust; otherwise he's never coming out of this."

Prim Everdeen's voice is sturdy, grounded, and far too mature sounding for someone her age. Her eyes never leave Peeta, whose hands turn an imaginary rolling pin over his thighs as he mutters something to himself about his brother Graham.

"And you think it's going to be easy getting her in here, Sweetheart?" I grumble, a little too harshly, at the young girl. Plutarch and Aurelius exchange a worried look.

Primrose holds her own against my flippant remark, however. Somehow, the small, frail child who cried for her sister on Reaping Day evolved into a fighter while everyone else was busy watching the Mockinjay. She crosses her arms over her chest and grimaces.

"Absolutely not. But if we start to work at her now, maybe eventually we can get her in here…"

I fight back an eye roll, guffaw at the suggestion, and stare at Peeta, who has rolling-pinned himself to sleep. If it weren't for the shackles and the dozens of security cameras, I'd say the scene was a peaceful one.

"I think what Haymitch is trying to say is that it's wishful thinking, Dear," Plutarch tells her, panic setting into his voice. "If I know Katniss Everdeen…"

"With all due respect, Mister Heavensbee, I am her sister. I think I may know her a little better than most people," Prim responds, her tone so professional, yet so sweet, that it's hard to argue at all with her.

The kid's going to make a phenomenal doctor someday.

"Look, with the rate at which things are going, a part of me thinks that he's going to need to see her, to find out from her what's real and what's not, in order to get any closer to becoming himself again. Otherwise we're just going to keep going in circles. My sister has been programmed as the core of this issue…at the end of the day, that's what we have to remember. Cutting her out of the equation entirely is going to get us no end result. She needs to see him."

"I understand, Doctor Everdeen," Aurelius replies, his tone cool and even. "But you must understand that your sister is physically refusing to visit the patient."

Prim nods solemnly. "Yes, I am aware, Doctor Aurelius. My sister wasn't too happy when she discovered that I was a part of Patient 1020's medical team, but the fact that she has allowed me to continue with our research indicates to me that she cares about him on some level still, and her refusal is coming from a place of fear."

"So what do you suggest we do?" Plutarch asks.

"Earn her trust," the young girl, wise beyond her years, responds without missing a beat. "Show her in whatever ways we can that Peeta is getting better and that he is no longer a danger to her or the child. I suggest we bring him paints, or a sketchbook, immediately…some sort of creative outlet will help him rediscover some things on his own."

Heavensbee nods quickly, "I can arrange for something like that."

"Good. Madge has been extremely beneficial for helping him figure out other people and circumstances, but we've barely let him come close to information about himself…information that could eventually bring out more of an understanding toward Katniss."

The girl is on fire.

She then asks for Peeta to be freed from his chains. This results in considerable push-back from Aurelius and his medical team, but the silver-tongued trainee manages to arrange for the shackles to be removed as soon as the art supplies arrive.

Her stern cerulean eyes are now fixed on me. "And I would like you to start talking to my sister about him more. I'm not asking you to be able to convince her to show up overnight, but just to plant the idea in her head and keep it there. Confront her, if you have to. You're good at that."

"I don't know if I'm exactly your best bet on that front, Sweetheart," I tell her dismissively. "Your sister and I don't have the best track record of staying cool when it comes to confrontation."

"Please, Mister Abernathy," Primrose Everdeen pleads, looking again like the munchkin who would sally up to Katniss whenever she could following her return from the Games. "You're one of the only people who knows how to reason with her…and I mean really reason."

"Why can't you ask any of the other people who are able to get through that thick skull of hers, then?" I chide as I pry myself away from her pouty gaze.

Prim huffs softly, and then she makes her way across the room until she is eye-level with my chest. Her tiny stature doesn't make her any less intimidating. Her blue eyes are ablaze, and she looks more like Katniss than ever.

"Because I have tried and failed. As for the others, one is currently indisposed, and the other one is currently using her and Arden as human shields to hide away from his own problems and confusions."

This is news to me, but it explains a lot in terms of why I hardly ever see Hawthorne unless he's hankering around in weaponry or why Undersee is spending all of her time trying so desperately to help Peeta Mellark regain coherent thoughts about Katniss.

I'm angriest at the girl. Not for running away, but for being such a coward about it that she'd allow herself to drag two more kids into this messy web of nightmares.

Primrose lowers her voice so that only I can hear what she has to say next.

"Please, Haymitch, if you talked to her, it could bring us one step closer to putting him, and her, and you, for that matter,back together. You owe them and yourself that much."

Not only is she sharp as a tack and tough as nails, but the golden-haired Everdeen is as perceptive as she is anything else. She knows the way to just about any set of heartstrings, and she's playing mine like a finely tuned fiddle.

I take a moment to peer over my shoulder at the shell of the boy behind the glass and start to make a list of my own. Haymitch Abernathy's list to figure out Peeta Mellark.

Baker's son. Merchant. Baker. Painter. Boy. Star-Crossed Lover. Speaker. Fighter. Man. Tribute. Victor. Neighbor. Volunteer. Messenger. Rescue. Patient. Survivor.

Friend.

Effie Trinket nudges her bony elbows into my thoughts. She looks exactly as she had on the evening she lay in the hospital after the rescue mission, stripped down of any bright wigs or gaudy costumes, but she's more iridescent than ever before as she fills my memory with her bright, toothy grin. She says:

"That's what friends do. They help each other."

I finally muster up the courage to look Primrose Everdeen in the eye and give her a resolute nod. I will speak with Katniss.

And, I add for good measure, I'll do my best to stay cool.

I blow my top as soon as I catch sight of her from down the hall. So much for staying cool.

"You've got a lot of nerve, coming after me when I left Peeta behind after the Quell…" I growl as I make my unannounced entrance into Katniss' quarters.

She looks exhausted, maybe even worse than he does down in the psych ward. She rises from where she was once crouched over Arden's crib, face contorted in shock.

"Excuse me?"

"Where have you been these past five weeks, Katniss?" I hiss as she rounds the doorway from the bedroom to face me in her cramped living room. She glowers at me for yelling and gestures at the baby that has just been put down for a nap. Between the two of us and all of the mounting tension, the area has grown claustrophobic.

"Taking care of my child." Her responses are as ready to defend herself as a sheath of arrows would be. "With no help from you, I may add. Where the hell have you been?"

"Taking care of your child's father!" I mimic viciously as I rake my fingers through my messy hair.

Katniss veers back, her expressions running the gamut of emotion at this news. I suppose it must have been a lot to know that her sister was in on the operation, but the added knowledge of her Mentor being thrown into the fray certainly won't help her grapple with scenario.

"What?" she whispers, tears springing into her eyes almost immediately. "You're seeing Peeta?"

I navigate my way around a multitude of baby toys until my face is just inches from hers, my fire breath mixing with her icy cold indignation.

"If it were the other way around, if you were the one who was hijacked, he would be by your side every single day. So tell me why it's Madge Undersee and your little sister who have been helping him heal and not you. He would be doing everything in his power to bring you back, and you know that…"

"He tried to kill me! He tried to kill our baby!" Katniss cries through gritted teeth, eyes squinting desperately in an attempt to keep her tears at bay. She starts trembling at the very mentioning of him. "He's not good for us. He's destructive…"

"And pretty boy isn't?" I fire back, hysterics creeping into my voice. "The same boy who put the rebellion before you time after time, the same boy who is blowing his short fuses down in weaponry right now, is going to be a safer bet? He's the worst possible father figure for that child, Katniss."

"You don't get to talk about him like that. You don't know Gale at all," she combats.

"I know him well enough to know that he's got a destructive personality, one that the Capitol isn't responsible for manufacturing. Gale Hawthorne probably knows less about what he wants or who is right now than you do."

She's had enough of my weighing in on her current situation, I can tell. I anticipate her retreat even before she does.

She lets out an animal-like screech when I grab onto her wrist, so hard that my fingernails dig into her where her pulse fluctuates rapidly. Katniss tries to swerve out of the way. I spin her around, so that I am blocking her path and she's got a clear view of Peeta's child while I talk to her.

"Let me go!" Katniss cries. "Get off of me!"

I keep my voice low, but just low enough to strike a chord in her heart. Primrose Everdeen has her emotional tactics, and I have mine.

"You're taking the easy way out, you know. Peeta is on his way to coming back to us, but Gale is here now, and settling for him is far easier than struggling through watching the boy you love suffer."

"I don't…" she begins, but I cut her short by removing my hand from her wrist and firmly planting both palms on her shoulders, in case I need to literally shake some sense into her.

This is one battle that was always bound to happen. Whether I would have accidentally sliced her with my knife after a rude awakening in Victor's Village, or she would have unknowingly aimed her arrow at me in the Quarter Quell, a part of me always suspected that I would go head to head with Katniss Everdeen at some point in my life.

And just as I also expected, it's a stalemate. We are too similar in tactic and fight to actually kill each other.

But boy, can we hurt each other.

"You don't love Peeta? Tell me Katniss, do you love Gale Hawthorne, or do you just love how convenient his services are? Because the boy Gale is replacing sure as hell loves you. He loved you when you were kids, he loved you when he made your kid, and he loves you right now. He may be brainwashed into thinking otherwise, but he is going to remember how much he loves you someday. Madge Undersee knows that. Prim, your thirteen-year-old sister, knows that. I know that. And when—not if, Katniss, when—he comes out on top of this and sees the girl he has been trying to learn to love again and his daughter with Gale Hawthorne, it will kill him."

"Shut up!" Katniss shrieks as she tries desperately to wriggle out of my grasp, punching and kicking and gnashing her teeth. Her tears are free-falling now, dropping like rain against my skin with searing splats that nearly cleave my heart in two.

It hurts me to have to speak to her in this way. I physically begin to feel sick as I note the veins that stick out on the backs of my hands from gripping her so tightly and the sweat that has puddled at my brow from resistance.

But, for goodness sake, someone has to get through to this girl.

Somewhere in the distance, a baby begins to cry. The sound paints a much bigger picture, the one I've been trying to get her to see all along. Her features tense in realization of what she has done. Silvery eyes, wide with terror and just a twinge of regret, meet mine for only a brief moment before she lunges against my arms and toward her daughter.

The moment my grip slackens is the moment she breaks free, squirming and shaking herself off like one of the many fish I have watched Finnick Odair let go back into the ocean. Her eyes kindle softly glowing fires of disdain, and they burn right into my center, threatening to spill all of my guts onto the floor.

Trying my hand at Primrose's strategy, I soften and throw my palms up in surrender. I fight to be heard and understood over Arden's piercing cries.

"Katniss. You're scared. You're a single mother and you're scared. I know that. But you don't have to handle everything like this…"

"And you're a sad excuse of a man, a drunken nobody," she spits vehemently.

It cuts me more than my stupid knife ever could cut her. Goodness knows I deserve it, and I deserve it from a countless list of casualties. But to hear it coming from her hurts in a way that feels as though it is coming from my own flesh and blood.

"Get out of my room, Haymitch. And don't you even think about coming near me or my daughter."

When it becomes evident that I am too shocked to move myself, she shoves me out of her door and slams it in my face for an added effect.

I don't go back to the hospital and report to Prim and Aurelius like I am supposed to do.

Instead, I spend the night breaking into the hidden stash of white liquor Plutarch had been providing me under the table until I stopped taking his contraband on the day Arden was born.

I told myself that I would get sober and stay sober. If for no one else, it was going to be for that girl, that boy, and their baby.

But I seem to have let them all down.

I drink until I forget Katniss, Peeta, and Arden's names.

A/N: Here's another long, wild chapter for you! First semester is finally over, and now I have plenty of time to write over my break! Thank you to everyone who wished me good luck on finals, also! They kicked my butt, but they're finally done :P

Hope you enjoyed this installment. I know it's a lot to take in and that Katniss seems impossibly difficult here, but I'm trying to portray her resistance toward Peeta in a different way given the AU nature of the baby plotline. Same goes for Effie. My AU take on her storyline, since I decided on it later in the game, is different than in both the books and movies, and I tried to do my best at handling her entrance into Thirteen. If either woman seems too out of character, I do apologize. I promise you, all of the things Haymitch, Madge, and Prim have said to Katniss are getting through to her, even though it really doesn't seem like it. You'll hear all about it in her POV next chapter, which I'll hopefully get out soon!

Thank you so much for the continued support on this story. Keep adding this to your favorites and follows lists and keep reviewing! I appreciate it so much!

Till next time,

-ILoVeWicked